


The Body in the Stairwell

by Callmeisolde



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Danny is The Immortal Iron Fist thank you for asking, Daredevil - Freeform, Gen, Hurt Matt Murdock, I think Frank would also be great for this fill, I wrote a bit more... I may add it on at a later date, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, but I just finished watching Iron Fist so, except Matt is unconscious, iron fist - Freeform, kinda a first character meeting, post season 2 daredevil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 11:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmeisolde/pseuds/Callmeisolde
Summary: My first fill for the Daredevil Kinkmeme, "Matt knows he’s dying. Maybe after a run in with the hand, maybe after a mugger got in a lucky shot, or however. But he’s in full costume and they CANNOT find out he was Daredevil because it would destroy Foggy’s career. He won’t ask Foggy’s last memory of him to be his bleeding, broken body, so who does he call?"





	The Body in the Stairwell

**Author's Note:**

> My first time filling a prompt, I needed something quick and different from my current WIP to get the juices flowing and I was so into this I literally wrote it entirely on the bus. That's unusual for me. Haha. I might come back to add on to this at some point, I like where it's going! Also, sorry to the prompter who probably wanted some Foggy angst with this.

Matt should be better prepared for this moment, but he's not.   
  
The realization is as physical a blow as any he's received. He's doubled over by it. He feels himself slipping to the concrete.   
  
Can't go home to bleed out on the sofa. Can't go to Claire to give up the ghost in her living room. Can't call Foggy, whose softness Matt has almost used up. Can't call Karen, who was never as soft as he thought she was. Elektra can't help him. Matt considers dragging his battered body to the church, Father Lantom has kept his secret so well. Decides against it. Fact is, there's no one in his life he wants to see him like this. There's no one he can burden with this next task.   
  
His brain is struggling for clarity. Oxygen is in precious low supply. He understands that there's only one way to protect his friends. Can't believe he never put a backup plan in place to cover this eventuality, especially with so many telling him this would happen. First Claire had predicted it. Bloody and alone. Then Foggy, you're going to get yourself killed. And somehow, Matt must have still refused to see. To be anything less than invincible. It was stubbornness. He'd always been stubborn. People used to say it about him with a smile, like it was a good quality. Blind orphan grows up all on is own, makes good grades and gets into Columbia school of law. Graduates top of the class. Boy, that kid is stubborn. He expects their opinions on this trait will change quickly. Man, that guy was stubborn, blind guy like that out there fighting ninjas, no wonder he got himself killed.   
  
Actually, Matt will throttle the first newspaper that mentions his blindness from beyond the grave.   
  
Of course, they're right.   
  
He's dying.   
  
It's a sharp fact, he can feel it. It feels different than the dull ache of a long night on the street. It's not broken, bruised ribs or being half gutted on a hook, or even an arrow through his shoulder. Though it is a little like massive blood loss and poison burning up his veins. It's numb extremities and trembling hands that feel too cold. It's his lungs refusing to expand in his chest and coughing with every breath. It's the slick of blood he spews with every cough. It's the way his head feels light and heavy at the same time, like he's spinning even though his body weighs too much to even hold up. It's the fact that, now that he's sitting on the ground, he knows he can't get back up. And Murdock's always get up. That's the rule. It's the way that that thought makes his eyes burn, and he hasn't cried about his dad in years. How he 's suddenly nine years old again and alone.  
  
He can smell it too. And hear it. His heart is tachycardic, there's adrenaline pumping through him still keeping the worst of the pain behind a firewall of sensations. He can smell how much he's sweating. Can smell how much blood is on his clothes. Can hear the wound still leeching from the beneath the compression bandage he improvised. No poison this time, but he doubts that’s needed to finish him off.   
  
He's in his suit. He's daredevil. But the minute daredevil dies in an alleyway, Matt Murdock is close behind. The police will find his body, they'll unmask him. Maybe it's even Brett. Matt's smack dab in his jurisdiction. So it won't take long to ID him. Then Foggy and Karen are being arrested. Obstruction of justice, or something else. No one can tie Claire to him. She might make it out unscathed. Father Lantom might not be brought into this. Or would they interview his priest? But Foggy... Foggy would lose everything.   
  
So there's only one thing to do next. Get rid of the body. His body. Daredevil can't be found, can't be unmasked, even in death.   
  
Frank could do it. That's a good thought. If he had ever considered this possibility through to its conclusion he might have thought to make a pact with Frank. Some kind of secret vigilante pact where they promise to come through for the other, preserve the others legacy. That sounds too corny for Frank. But Frank would know how to do the ugly part, the part where you make a body disappear forever. He could probably even be convinced to watch after Foggy and Karen in Matt's absence. Frank has this weird sense of honour Matt doesn't quite understand yet.   
  
But he didn't plan ahead. He doesn't have any way to contact Frank. Not in the ten minutes or so he has left.   
  
Just one contact in his burner phone he hasn't considered yet.   
  
Stick.   
  
The old man had always maintained a way of popping into Matt's life wholly unannounced and unbidden. Usually unwanted. He had tried to kill Elektra, even after the revelation that he had raised her. He knew what was at stake. He was maybe the only living person who did. So after the funeral, after they'd buried her together, the woman Matt loved and the woman Stick had raised, Matt had put his number in the burner phone. Maybe he had been planning ahead after all.   
  
He manages to fish the phone out of his pant pocket. Flip it open. He dials S. There's only one contact per letter to make this as easy as possible.   
  
"Gotta say," Stick answers, voice gritty with age and electronic distortion. "Didn't expect to hear from you again."  
  
"Stick." Matt chokes, "I'm behind a laundromat on 42nd." Muffles a wet cough he knows Stick can hear, "need help with a body."  
  
"Whose body?"  
  
"Mine." Matt flips the phone closed.   
  
He loses some time. The relief of knowing that things are ending soon, that there's a chance he won't leave a trail of shattered lives, makes it easier to slip away.   
  
He starts awake when someone strikes him across the face. His senses are muted and hazy. He's not breathing properly. He's cold. He tries to breathe but it feels like there's something constricting his chest. He moves the muscles, his chest rises, but not enough air is getting in. He sounds like he's drowning. His mouth is wet and coppery. His head is spinning, like he's drunk way too much alcohol.   
  
He's slapped in the face again.   
  
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, fight!"  
  
"S-stick?"   
  
"That's right you fuckin disappointment, what did you do to yourself? Got yourself stabbed all to hell."  
  
"The Hand," Matt mutters, tries to bat Sticks hands away from his chest where they're prodding at his seeping wound.   
  
Stick makes a sound like a grunt. Matt’s slipped down the wall and he’s laying on his side. Stick grabs Matt’s arm and manipulates his hand to form a fist, presses it into the wound. “Keep putting pressure on it.” He mutters and Matt tries, he does try, but there’s not a lot of strength left in his arm.   
  
Stick finally straightens Matt out, hooks his arms through Matt’s arms and leverages him up. He half carries, half drags Matt out of the alley to a waiting car. Matt’s losing more time. Stick keeps pressing his fist into the wound. Should be painful but it’s not.   
  
“Just keep it together a little longer, Matty.” The voice is soft, too soft. Matt shakes himself to clear his head.   
  
“No, Stick. You… you don’t understand.”   
  
“Keep it together kid. We’re almost there.”   
  
“Stick… you have to hide the body.”   
  
A warm hand finds his face in the dark of Matt’s dwindling perception. “There were only two adepts born in your whole generation, Matty. I’ve already lost one.”   
  
It’s too late. Matt thinks, and the thought is comforting. 

#

There’s a loud rap at the door. It’s always loud this part of town, even at night, so it’s no wonder Colleen doesn’t stir. But Danny sleeps light. Lately, he doesn’t get much sleep at all. Too many thoughts collecting at the dam of his mind. About Gao, his parents, The Hand. And lately, Ku’n-Lun. Unguarded. Defenseless.   
  
So he’s already awake when the banging starts. Danny extricates himself from the tangle of bedsheets and pads, barefoot, to the door of the dojo. Through the glass, he can make out only a shadow in the dim hallway.   
  
“Iron Fist?” a voice asks through the partition. It’s an old man’s voice, shaking with exertion. Danny unlocks the door and cracks it. The man outside is wearing a military green jacket. He’s old, grizzled like a dried up fruit, but lean and strong looking. His eyes are milky white and sightless, and Danny is instantly reminded of stories he heard in K’un Lun of blind Master Izo. The hilt of the man’s katana peers over his shoulder.   
  
“I am the Immortal Iron Fist,” Danny responds, he catches himself the way he sometimes does now, sounding like a joke at his own expense.   
  
“Hope you’re awake Iron Fist, time to put on your big boy pants.” The old man turns from the door and starts back down the hall towards the stairs. Danny opens the door and takes a step out, considering whether he should call for Colleen.   
  
“Wait, who are you?”  
  
“I'm one of the last living members of your army, The Chaste, protectors of Ku’n-lun.” The man calls over his shoulder.   
  
“I have an army?”   
  
“Not anymore.” He pauses at the top of the stairs, “You coming?”   
  
Danny calls over his shoulder, “Colleen?” Hopes that’s enough to wake her, follows to the stairs. “What are you doing here?”   
  
“You know how to use it? The Fist?”   
  
“I focus my Chi... And I punch things.”   
  
Old guy stops hard on a step right before the first landing, Danny bumps into him “What about the other stuff?”   
  
“What other stuff?”  
  
“Fucking perfect. Have you ever healed with it?”  
  
“Uh, ya, once.”   
  
From the dojo above, “Danny?”   
  
Old guy doesn’t miss a beat. “Tell me.”  
  
“How do you know about this....”   
  
“Hurry up and tell me!”   
  
“Colleen,” Danny motions up the stairs, “she was poisoned by The Hand. She was dying. I healed her with The Fist.”   
  
“You think you can do it again?”  
  
“I don't know, it drained me.... why?”  
  
Stick starts walking again. He pivots on the landing and quickens his pace. Danny stops dead, his hands braced on either side of the narrow staircase while he takes in the scene at the bottom of the stairs. "What the ..."  
  
There's a body in the entryway. The doors to the street have been barred from inside, a Billy club stuck through the handles. The man is laying on his back, head propped on the first stair, feet pointed at the door. A long smear of red from the door to the stair says he was dragged there. Probably by the old guy. One arm splays sideways, bloody palm pointed up. The other hangs loosely over the gaping chest wound.   
  
"Matty," the old man growls, "you're supposed to be putting pressure on that."  
  
Danny takes shakes his head, takes the remaining steps two at a time. He calls back up the stairs as he hears Colleen approaching, “Call Claire.” Leaps off the last stair to avoid stepping too close to the body, lands by the guy's legs.   
  
He's older than Danny, just by looking at him, but not by much. His dark hair is mussed and matted in places. His eyes are heavy-lidded and closed, face is slack and blood smeared. Danny sucks in a breath when he finally notices the clothes. The guy is wearing a red and black suit with dark piping, a thick, hardened weave fabric, paneled and belted and pocketed.   
  
It’s the suit on the front of the newspaper, Danny’s also seen it on the TV's playing in restaurants and the computer screens of his employees at Rand. He's seen it and he knows it and the man bleeding out in his stairwell is Daredevil.   
  
Old guy kneels by Daredevils head, he sets his katana on the ground. His hands flutter like he doesn't know where to touch, his sightless eyes study the ceiling with great concentration.   
  
"Hurry up," he hisses, "he's almost gone."  
  
Danny doesn't know a heck of a lot about medicine, but he can tell that's true. The guy's face is paper white, lips a little blue and flecked with blood. He hasn't stirred, he's breathing but it's a shallow rattle. The chest wound is seeping, bleeding lazily and steadily. Danny hovers, he feels his own breath thick in his throat.   
  
"What the fuck are you waiting for!" The old guy grabs Danny's wrist. "Do it!"  
  
But that's not how it works, Danny wants to shout back. He's never been good at this under stress. He's momentarily back in that moment when Coleen was the one in the floor. His Coleen. Paperwhite, too quiet, too close to the blackness that already claimed the most important people in Danny's life. He remembers Bakuto, voice soothing and calm and encouraging. It's miles away from this guy, clutching and angry and, something else? Bakuto turned out to be the worst guy in the world. Worse than madam Gao because he first came as a friend. Why should Danny trust this old blind guy, stick, now?   
  
The look on his face, Danny realizes, is desperation. He doesn't want anything from Danny, he's not here to cajole or manipulate — he's here because whoever the guy bleeding out on the dirty tiled floor is, he means something to him. Danny thinks again about Colleen, and from there it's easy. If one thing can focus Danny's Chi when it's really needed and otherwise impossible — it's remembering the people he loves. It's protecting what hasn't yet been taken from him. It's caring.   
  
So he cares. He thinks of how many people Daredevil has helped over in Hell’s Kitchen. He thinks about what It means to be a good man. To do good things for others and expect nothing in return. Of being a warrior and using those skills to save rather than harm. He focuses the warmth in his chest into a bright, burning light and feels it travel down the muscles of his arm to his fist. He clutches it there, the light, and slowly, deliberately opens his fingers around it until he's holding it in his palm. He reaches out and places that palm on Daredevils chest. The old guy crouches on the first stair, puts his palms on the guy's cheeks and holds him there. He's saying something, his voice soothing and calm now. But he’s not talking to Danny, so he puts it out of his mind and focuses. He focuses on keeping the light burning and bright, on moving that energy from his own body out into the man in his stairwell.   
  
When Danny punches things with The Fist, the energy stays in his body. He wields it as a power. He weaponizes everything, his love for Colleen, his hurt and rage about his parent's murder, his longing, his fear. He bludgeons with it, and he hits hard, because Danny has been through a lot. But when Danny uses his Chi to heal, it's different. He gathers it all up, but then he has to let it all go.  
  
With his hand on the man's chest, he can feel the energy ebbing, seeping from his own body. He has gathered the warmth of his rage, and he has released it. He has gathered the heat of his love, and he has released it. He has stoked the fire of his hurt, and now, eyes focused on the pale bloody face of the man before him, the man hardly breathing and hardly alive, he releases his hurt and is empty. Reduced. Danny falls forward and the light goes out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love <3


End file.
